


say your nevers, sleep your dream

by fangirldaemillia



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 09:46:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6047031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fangirldaemillia/pseuds/fangirldaemillia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode 1x04. Quentin has a nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This would not have existed without Bee, who followed me down into Queliot hell, listened to my sobbing rants, and offered her expert beta skills. Thanks, babe.
> 
> Title inspired by anyone lived in a pretty how town, by ee cummings.

_I never left the hospital._ The words measure out the beat of his heart, tripping and stuttering. _I never._ A cacophony of sound that has drowned out everything else. _Never left._ He watches with wretched clarity as the sunlit green of Brakebills began to blur and run. _I never left the hospital._ It drip drip drips down, until there is nothing left but a white wall. _The hospital._

No magic. Just worthless, dreaming Quentin, lost touch at last with reality.

He should have realized sooner, he thinks, bitter with self-incrimination, and curls tight around himself. He had fought them, raged against the reality, but he-- _never left_. It was so obvious in retrospect. He’d wrapped fragile daydreams around himself like a cloak; like it could protect him, like it could _save_ him.

He’d dreamed up a place where magic had been real all along and he’d made the cut, been let in on the secret and given the opportunity to learn. He had belonged. He had friends: clever, determined, outrageous friends. And the future was no longer about systematically stripping away everything he’d ever cared about.

It had been the perfect escape from the gritty, sterile reality awaiting him. _I never left._ But now the dream had fractured, leaving splinters in his skin and a hitching rattle in his chest, and no amount of wishing would bring it back.

Julia visits him. He tried to tell her in the beginning, skin stretched tight and fraying under the weight, but she’d just watched with sharp eyes and offered broken tokens of normalcy: a future, a wedding, a _laugh_. Because Julia had gotten her wish: he’d picked something--he’d picked the fantasy, and now here he was.

“Quentin.”

She’d been his best friend for so long. His only friend; the only one that mattered. And god he had loved her, still loved her, but Julia had grown up without him. He didn’t recognize her anymore; he didn’t recognize himself.

Quentin wasn’t used to being enviable. He couldn’t understand why she’d done it. _She betrayed me; cast a net, watched me drown, no, no, that was just the dream._ It wasn’t magic he wanted, not like that, not in the grand scheme of things. _Magic isn’t real. I never._ Magic was not what he mourned when he thought about his fractured fantasy.

He wished he could hate her, but he just felt adrift, thready with a panic he can’t explain. How could this be his life? _I never._ It couldn’t be.

 _“Quentin_.”

They’d been friends. Hadn’t they? He regrets what he said to her, of course he does. He winces when thinks of that condescending party-trick spite-spittle. Bottled up hurt had spilled over in the heat of the moment--but this wasn’t the heat of the moment. This had been _deliberate_ , calculated. Julia, pushing him to give up on silly dreams. To face reality, to _grow up_. Punishing him for finally having something of his own, because Julia had changed her mind.

And he deserved it, didn’t he? He was a disappointment--to his parents, to Julia. It was better this way.

_I never. Fuck. I never left. I never left the fucking hospital._

Reality was white walls, barred windows, and the macabre shadows of the people he’d dreamed up as friends, and _he deserved it._

“That’s _enough._ Wake up!”

He woke, jackknifing upright, but there were arms wrapping around him, holding him still, and he’s struggling against it before he’s fully aware. _I won’t let you strap me down again. I won’t._ But there’s a gentle hand in his hair and a familiar smell pervading his shuddering lungs, and he begins to still.

“--safe. You’re at Brakebills, in your room. It’s just a nightmare.”

Eliot, he realizes, and collapsed against the other man in choking, shuddering recognition.

They stay that way for a long time, Quentin’s hands clenched tight into the fabric of Eliot’s shirt as he shivers out from under the weight of the nightmare. Distantly, he knows Eliot must be uncomfortable, perched awkwardly on the edge of the bed with Quentin half in his lap, but Eliot hasn’t said a word. He’s silent and still except for the hand running through Quentin’s hair, and Quentin is too grateful to break the silence, except:

“You weren’t real.” But it’s not what he meant to say--not the truth he wanted to utter; he’s still caught up in the fragments of his dream, hopelessly tangled--and he panics, trying to draw away. Eliot’s grip tightens and doesn’t relax again until Quentin has stopped fighting him.

“You are going to listen to me, Quentin _Coldwater,”_ Eliot demands, body and voice bracketing him in, and there’s no option except to do exactly that.

“I am real. As real as the bitch who tried to turn your brains into an egg scramble. _This--_ ” the hand in Quentin’s hair tightens, pulling until Quentin finally looks up at him through the string of it, “--is real. _You are not_ alone _here._ Do you understand?”

“I--” Quentin tried to shy away, but Eliot is unrelenting and he chokes out a “yes.” It doesn’t feel like defeat, exactly, but there is something wounded and fluttering underneath the surface that he doesn’t have a name for. He doesn’t look away.

Quentin isn’t sure what Eliot is looking for, eyes dark and expression unreadable, but eventually he releases his grip on Quentin’s hair. “Good.”

“Good,” he repeats, quietly and mostly to himself. He began to pull away.

Quentin’s reaction is instantaneous and visceral, jolting forward to halt the motion with blind panic--“ _don’t_ ”--but he chokes on the words, can’t get them past his throat. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to say, to _ask_ , and he can’t look at Eliot so he stares at his hands, clenching and unclenching.

There is a considering silence, and Quentin still doesn’t dare look up. “Let me get comfortable at least,” Eliot finally relents.

The bed isn’t really big enough for the two of them, not to fit comfortably, but Eliot maneuvers them until it works, curled behind and over Quentin’s shorter frame. He wouldn’t precisely call it spooning; Eliot is practically laying on him. It should feel smothering, but it--doesn’t.

Quentin has no idea what the other man is thinking, but he’s caught up somewhere between the remnants of his nightmare and the strange reality he’s found himself in, and he needs to know, even if he’s damning himself in the same breath:

“Eliot--”

“If you insist, we can talk in the morning,” he admonished. “For now, try to sleep.”

Quentin inhales shakily, tempted to argue, but he’s just so _tired_. He doesn’t want to fight anymore; doesn’t want to second guess himself and everything else. So he pulls back his questions, his insecurities, and tries to get comfortable. _Please._ Nothing feels quite real, hazy and disjointed, but the weight against his back feels more real than anything else so he focuses on that, breath slowing in increments. _Please be real._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who enjoyed and commented on the first chapter! :'3

Quentin wakes to the slow beat of Eliot’s heart beneath his ear. They must have moved at some point in the night, Eliot onto his back with Quentin sprawled across his chest. Relief and embarrassment make his breath hitch, not quite believing, and his fingers flex and curl against the man’s body before he thinks better of it. He’d been certain Eliot wouldn’t be here in the morning; that he’d just been another cruel dream.

It takes him longer than it probably should have to realize Eliot is actually awake. He forces himself to sit up, all too aware of the flush creeping across his skin. Eliot watches him with half-lidded eyes, waiting, and Quentin doesn’t know what to say. Should he apologize? thank him? do they call it an aberration and move on? (He wants to know why Eliot stayed).

“Time to wake up,” Eliot muses when the silence has stretched on for too long, and Quentin feels a cold shiver of dread at the words, but the room remains the same, _Eliot_ stays the same, regarding him with fathomless eyes for a moment longer before he is up and moving. Quentin’s nails bite into his palm as he resists reaching after him.

The man stretches, lean and artlessly elegant in a way that makes Quentin ache, and doesn’t quite look at him when he says, “I’m going to shower. Breakfast in thirty.”

And Quentin realizes Eliot is giving him an out. He isn’t going to push this--he won’t hold Quentin to something he said, or tried to say, in the middle of the night--but he’s also offering something in turn. And while the last thing Quentin wants to do is talk, if he doesn’t then Eliot will walk out that door and it will be like last night had never happened.

“I’ll see you in thirty,” he manages to croak. Eliot nods, expression inscrutable, and slips out the door.

It’s a herculean effort to make himself move, but there are shadows left strewn around the room that he refuses to entertain. If he does, he’ll never make it downstairs. He rolls out of bed and gets ready on autopilot.

When he gets to the kitchen Eliot is already there, back turned and caught up in a debate with Margo about mimosas. A week ago, even a day ago, he isn’t sure he would have noticed the tension radiating from the pair. He knows he can be oblivious, too tangled up in what goes on in his own head, but he’s almost certain mimosas had not been the topic of discussion before they heard him coming.

Quentin almost turns around--what if he mucks it up? what if Eliot has changed his mind--but Margo sees him and smiles so he keeps moving forward, sliding awkwardly onto a stool.

Eliot isn’t quite looking at him again, expression wry, and it makes Quentin flush with something like anger, but not quite. The silence stretches between them, writhing like a wild thing, and Quentin can’t stand it.

“I was promised breakfast,” he finally manages, as lofty as he can. It seems the right thing to have said, because Margo laughs and the lingering tension in Eliot’s shoulders melts away.

“ _Were_ you now,” Eliot murmurs, and Margo smiles like she knows a secret. “I suppose I should indulge you, then. What would you like for breakfast, Quentin?” Eliot inquires, casual innocence as he leans across the counter towards Quentin.

There is a blatant, if cliche, answer to this question, but the words are stuck in his throat. Instead, Quentin reaches out and takes hold of Eliot’s tie. It’s satisfying to watch the way his pupils dilate, to hear the barely-there hitch of breath; it gives Quentin the courage he needs. “I’m sure you can figure something out,” he teases, with only a slight quaver to belay his nerves, and tugs. Eliot obliges.

The brush of Eliot’s mouth against his own doesn’t magically fix things--Quentin knows this won’t stop the nightmares--but it feels something like salvation all the same. He feels so giddy he might burst, nearly sick with nerves; it’s the most grounding experience he’s ever experienced.

“As much as it pains me, you and I are going to have a serious conversation later,” Eliot warns, when he finally pulls away. Quentin nods, not entirely happy, but he’d learned his lesson about avoidance.

“Excellent! Margo, darling, fetch the eggs. I have a craving for hollandaise sauce.”

There was an edge of surrealism to the morning, hazy and warm, that Quentin can’t quite explain. As if breakfast and a kiss were somehow stranger than curses and nightmares, stranger than a school that taught magic and a monster that walked through mirrors. He’s not sure what that says about him.

He’s honest enough to know he’s a mess, even without having to question the validity of his experiences. He was anxious, easily overwhelmed, and his self-esteem was in the gutter. There’s always going to be a part of him that doesn’t think he deserves this. But it came down to a choice; he got to decide what his reality was going to be. And this was his choice:

He _had_ left the hospital.


End file.
